Team NASA

Many Americans have a favorite sports team; teams for whom they cheer when they take on rivals. When a group of people congregate to root on their favorite football team, say in a local pub, the energy involved and the sense of camaraderie experienced can be spine-chilling. Even if the sports team loses, the sense of connection remains and is still indescribable; through ups and downs all leading up to the point to where your team has either succeed or they have not.

This is how I see the state of affairs when it comes to NASA and their quests into space. When Curiosity lands on Mars on August 5th, do you think every-day people are going to be out at a local pub eagerly watching the big screen TVs? Every time there is a mission such as this, it is the football equivalent of throwing a Hail-Mary pass blindfolded from the 1-yard line of your own end zone into heavy coverage with one second left in the game, down 7 points and still needing a 2-point conversion to pull out the win. Very difficult, but not impossible if you know what you’re doing, and it is stupefying that so few people know about it or care to watch it.

Missions like this are the ultimate nail-biter that every football nut loves and actively seeks. There is no “Team NASA”. In that I mean it seems as if there are very few hard-core fans of our own ability to do these difficult and wondrous things. I wish that pioneering events such as these were taken into the public eye much more and appreciated. Major network stations won’t air these events and so they go unnoticed.

I truly wish that I could walk into my local brew pub (packed to the brim) on the 5th with all the TVs airing the events as they happen. I would like to be able raise my glass to the success or failure of the mission with dozens of other like-minded fanatics, just as I would in supporting my Alma Mater.